I recently won a book by a relative of mine: Henderson Yoakum, who wrote the first "History of Texas." It is the first volume of his two-volume history published in 1855. Most of these books were destroyed in a fire, so I am quite thrilled to have even half a set. The purchase reminded me of a journal I wrote after a camping trip across East Texas back in the early 1990s. I decided to post that journal here in tribute to my 19th-century cousin. Being gainfully unemployed has left me raring for wide open spaces and unbridled freedom. Somewhat like swallowing the entire state of Texas. So it didn’t take much of a nudge from my online friend, Buddy, a native Texan, to talk me into traveling the length and breadth of the Longhorn state with no agenda and no deadlines. A pilgrimage of sorts, with us the spiritual pioneers. I was the first to pull into the parking lot at the First Methodist Church in Orange. There is always an FMC in any Texas town so it was a natural choice for a meeting spot. I parked out of the Texas sun and took my 5-1/2-pound poodle under tow for a walk around the block. I looked up when I heard a clang, clang, clang of a muffler and, sure enough, it was my email buddy, Buddy. He told me he’d be driving a 1979 Pontiac Phoenix - and, although I don’t know much about cars, this had to be IT. Back when we lived in Nashville, the kids called these heavyweight vehicles landcruisers.
Buddy had been on the road several days, coming in from Nevada, stopping to visit his son in Fort Collins. I had an easier drive from Pensacola, Fla., stopping to visit my daughter and new granddaughter in New Orleans and then driving across Louisiana to the Texas border. It took us a while to unload his filled car to make room for my things, eliminating camping gear and items we wouldn’t really need. Buddy is a true southern storyteller and I knew I was in for some entertaining days ahead. He began telling me about his work in the Texas oil fields as a young man growing up in Graham in West Texas. A roughneck is a jack-of-all-trades, he began.
“He’s not a plumber, but he can cut pipes. He’s not an electrician, but he can split wire. He’s not an operator, but he can use heavy equipment.” A roustabout, on the other hand, is the lowest form of labor on the rigs - like the gophers at a newspaper - they “go for” this and “go for” that. On the trip, I finally learned the difference between a oil rig and a radio tower - and even began to distinguish the singles, doubles and triples. The taller the rig, the more quickly a team can change out pipes when the bits break. Buddy told me how Howard Hughes’ daddy made his money on a type of drilling bit that broke less often, one that time-conscious drillers (the boss of the drilling crew) quickly took a shine to. Buddy’s father had been a driller - “a dingdong daddy from Dumas,” explaining this title was from a song popular way back when. The family traveled from boomtown to boomtown.
On a side road (highways used locally now that the interstate is in place) near Orange, we encountered the first of several abandoned vintage “filling” stations. The people in the Lone Star state seem to have a deep attachment to these monuments to the automobile. They looked more like movie sets to me - and I kept expecting the ghost of Jimmy Dean to walk up to us. Our first roadkill sight was an armadillo and I quickly snapped a photo of it in case I didn’t see a live one during the trip. The Stuckey’s in this area was decorated with giant aloes and several impressive cattle skulls. I thought of Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting of similar bones - and decided my trip wouldn’t be complete unless I found one, too. It was a kind of zen visualization on my part. I like to test this theory out at times - if forms are formless and thoughts take form, or however the sutra goes, well, then perhaps I can connect with my Buddha mind and create the scene as I go. I bought a bumper sticker for Buddy’s car that already was beginning to seem appropriate: “Don’t Mess with Texas.”
As I was examining a plant that looked like yarrow, I began inadvertently to swat my bare legs. Finally, irritated to the point of consciousness, I turned my attention from the plants to my body. Monster mosquitoes had invaded them.
“Whoa,” I remarked. “Everything is bigger in Texas.” We abandoned the field.
The next stop was civilization: Houston. We toured the Mark Rothko Chapel with its dozen or so somber black paintings inside its muted skylighted tomb. Buddy decided to return from this underworld to the reflective pool with its broken obelisk - a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I sat in one of the pews and stared at the black canvasses. As my eyes adjusted to the light density, I began to see various strokes of paint and to distinguish various hues of black among the paintings. At one point, I felt I could even sense dominant hues - such as purple - within the mass of blackness. I was no longer seeing black rectangles against white walls but a whole other world of dark spontaneity and dark color. To see deeper into things, one has to abandon the boxes that wall in thoughts.
Outside, Buddy had discovered some great plays of light around the pool - and took me on a walk, letting these unfold for me as well. The constant ripple of the water grabbed the sunlight and danced in the corner. It turned the water on fire and seemed almost three-dimensional. There were some wild plums in the landscape - and I enjoyed a few of these. Buddy found a piece of broken bamboo and began carving a smaller version of the walking stick he carried - filled with Chinese characters carved in the cane following a mishap on a mountain in China. I had read a book by an American photographer who made the pilgrimage to the 88 temples on one island in Japan. Pilgrims there are called henros and they are identified by their bamboo canes. I hadn’t made it to Japan, but I was now a henro and had my cane. We only had an hour to tour the Menil Collection next door, which is hardly enough time to walk in and acclimate to an art museum, but we concentrated on the ancient works - and I thought of my young roommate, Jodi, who is studying ancient art history as I passed by hieroglyphs and a tiny Venus of Willendorf-type statue. Little did I realize that as I helped her review time periods and styles that I would be a witness to the real thing several weeks later.
We walked over to the Greekfest just in time for the closing announcement - and managed to get a bite to eat (they weren’t selling anything) by asking for scraps for Petey, my dog. I got my first taste of Texas Rangers on horseback as they escorted the crowd to the gate. They are serious folks - and I told Buddy they were ominous to visitors. I couldn’t imagine sheriff’s deputies mounting steeds and driving people like cattle off the grounds off our beautiful Greek church in Pensacola. But then, Texas is like that and Texans don’t seem to mind. I tried to get into the restroom at two corner gas stations and was told it was broken at the first and was “closed” for the evening at the second. Buddy waved his stick at the cashier the second time, and he rang the silent alarm. It’s amazing how threatening bamboo can be. We ducked into the Chinese restaurant to avoid any more Rangers - and got an equally odd reception there. Buddy confessed the Chinese script on his bamboo cane was carved by nationalist Chinese and apparently caused the less political proprietors some consternation.
“They probably think we belong to the CIA,” Buddy explained. He had addressed them in Chinese and the girl answered, “ I don’t speak Chinese.” Odd that she recognized it, though.
Besides filling stations and cowboy cops, a central theme to Texas is the court houses. Buddy had sent me a book of photos of them - and I wondered why anyone would purchase such a book. Richmond broke me in on Texas history. The city was on high ground and therefore flourished more than its Brazos River-flooded neighbors. The monument at the modest city hall was crested by a bluejay and contained a poetic tribute to some human Jaybirds. We couldn’t piece together this political puzzle, so Buddy went inside the city water office and came out with a Richmond native who explained that the Jaybirds were a county party that pre-existed the Republicans and Democrats. It was formed following Reconstruction when most townsmen who were disenfranchised for participating in the treason of the Confederacy had regained the privilege of voting. The Yankee Carpetbaggers were not pleased and wanted this group disbanded. Someone fired a shot from a window of a residence that was still extant and killed three bystanders who weren’t even Jaybirds. The monument contained their names and a tribute to this effort to win Texas back for Texans. The town also boasted the last of the Diebolt jails, which could be purchased like a large construction kit and built onsite.
The land comprising this high ground sported many plantations, and most owners kept a city dwelling in Richmond as well. The gentleman from the water company also noted that although teetotaler Carrie Nation lived in Richmond and although Richmond supported eighteen saloons while she was in residence, “she never bothered any of them, but went up North with her campaign against drinking.” Guess she knew enough not to mess with Texas.
Texas natives are abundant in this diverse state. And nearly every one of them boasts a surname that belongs to one of the “three hundred.” Finally, I asked the obvious. “What three hundred?” It turns out that in all the mishmash of ownership by Spain, France and then Mexico, an Anglo-American by the name of Moses Austin convinced the Mexican government to honor the Spanish land grant given to him in 1821. Under the plan, Austin was allowed to settle 300 families in the area between the Brazos and Colorado rivers. In 1825, Empresario Austin was authorized to bring in 900 more families and six years later, 800 European and Mexican families, bringing the population of Texas up to 5,665. A lot of these settlers came from Tennessee, including members of my mother’s family, the Yoakums. I knew that Yoakum County and Yoakum city were named for family members, but genealogy had never taken root in me, so the facts were always ho-hum. The undauntable character of this state was working its charm, however, and I began to marvel at the idea my pioneer family played some as yet unknown role here.
At Richmond, the role of trains began to loom. Where I live, I hear a train about twice a day at most. Here there was a constant rumbling on the tracks. These people don’t know trains are outmoded, I surmised. I also learned what being on the wrong side of the tracks really meant. If a rail executive didn’t like your town, he could destroy it very legally by running tracks right up main street. Here and in other cities I witnessed this. The business area moved out and those without financial means moved into the nouveau wrong side of the tracks. The town of Rosenberg, for example, was created by a railroader after Richmond refused to allow the steam train to refill water for the engines in their town. When the tracks ran through the town (ahem), the town had to relocate and rebuild.
It was pretty obvious that making 30 miles a day was going to take us about a year to cross Texas, so we abridged our plans and decided to limit our visit to East Texas. When my daughter learned of my upcoming visit to this state, she remarked, “All I remember about Texas is thinking we would never make it through that state. It takes forever!” Imagine how much longer it would take using only FM roads (farm to market). We vowed not to use the interstates except as a last resort.
Buddy told me about doodlebugs as we traveled on FM 36 in Austin County. These are the local name for short trains traveling between towns. Just as people get sidetracked by imposing ideas, these doodlebugs are sidetracked for their more powerful brethren. They are also the name of the ant lion, which lays a vortex of sand for its clients. I had tried to unearth the bug beneath the shifting sands many times while living in south Alabama, but saw one for the first time when Buddy captured one. He also told me about tumblebugs, which roll dung into small balls and bury them in the grounds as an egg hatchery. Like Eskimos regarding snow, Texans have many references to dung of various origins, none of which can be found in Webster’s. Texans must live by the compass. Road signs in Texas have their own personality as well - you can be on South 190 traveling East and it will have both indicators. Despite the precision of the signs, directions are often given as “thataway” or “thisaway.” After giving elaborate instructions, Texans always end with an encouraging “you can’t miss it.” As often as not, we did, however.
Crop identification was not as easy for my roughneck tour guide. I would ask, “What’s that growing there?” and after hearing “combine maize” a number of times, I realized that was generic for something to feed the cattle.
Now I am an urban camper. My idea of wilderness is at an RV park with hot showers. Buddy, on the other hand, wouldn’t have anything to do with organized campgrounds.
“Anyone from Texas knows it’s okay to camp on a non-working ranch if the owner hasn’t posted a ‘no trespassing’ sign. Very reluctantly I climbed a fence to search for a campsite. As we walked toward what we hoped would be dryer turf, I noticed what could have been fresh cow patties and remarked I preferred not ending my life being gored by an irate bull. Not to worry, he said. The first set of cattle bones sans head were stark to me. Eerie. Buddy explained that someone had rustled this bovine victim and left the carcass for the buzzards. Up a ways we came across a whole graveyard of bones. I gave a whoop that may have passed for a Hollywood version of a Native American. There was a bull skull. With an extreme show of tolerance, he let me claim my prize. Then I saw another one - with a different set of horns and insisted I needed two skulls, so he carried one and I the other.
By this time, my legs were almost dripping from the goring of Texas mosquitoes and we decided this would not be a good campsite. I retraced my steps faster than Buddy - he wore long pants - and then leaned the horned skull on the wire as I crossed over. That’s when I noticed the exiting of several large red hornets. Gingerly, I looked inside, and, sure enough, I was carrying a nest of them. Why they had let me carry them over the rough terrain for about a half-mile, I’ll never know, but I was grateful. We chose to leave this head right where it was and put the other one in the back seat. I covered it with a sheet when I decided it looked like a platform for diabolic worship.
A historical marker along the road pointed out that a New Yorker whose last name was Allen - one of the three hundred - had survived a battle with Santa Anna in which his father and nephew perished - because he was away on a recruiting mission. Buddy also explained there are no adverbs in the Texas language. “Run quick,” for example.
The landscape changed when we reached Sealy. Of course, nature was still with us, and we found a hunter spider (the jumping kind) that looked the size of Jack the Giant Killer. First we went to Eagle Lake, where Buddy and his brother had engineered a prototype solar house ten years earlier. The cement block contractor who had originally built the house with his own products had sold it to a local restaurateur, who was kind enough to take us out to see it. The brothers had added a solar greenhouse-type room to the side. Solar heat was used to heat up the block walls that conducted heat through air rather than water. Other solar engineers pooh-poohed the idea, but it was still working very well. In fact, the owner said a university in Florida was repeating the experiment.
This section of Texas had been settled by German immigrants and the roadside no longer looked wild and woolly. They had tamed the fields, erected lovely American windmills, raised herds of dairy cattle and in general created a tidy little Europe. We decided to visit Hackamacks in Industry. We discovered this popular German restaurant was only open four evenings a week. Our camping choices were another attempt on abandoned property, an unused state park we’d passed earlier or the “rest stop one mile.” We decided to check out the latter - and traveled a mile in all four directions. Must have to be Texan to interpret that one. It was dusk, and I wasn’t in the mood to face too much more of the unknown so we returned to the park. In the dark, the grass seemed three feet high. I commented I’d never been in a state park that left the main road unmowed. We couldn’t find a parking space, so we decided to just park on the road and set up the tent in front of the car so we could use the headlights. We had just settled in for the evening when I heard a forlorn cry. Immediately, it was answered by another. And another. We seemed to be circled.
“Buddy, are those wolves?”
“No, they are coyotes.”
“Do coyotes eat people? No, they are afraid of them, but they might eat a poodle.”
I thought of the people snuggled in their houses, probably not even cognizant of these eerie cries. People don’t realize how fragile life is, I thought. They are content to ignore their mortality. I was grateful for seeing how fleeting life is. After all, wasn’t my great- great- etc. grandfather George Yoakum of Claiborne County, Tenn., who was squeezed to death by a bear? As a boy out in the woods, didn’t Valentine Yoakum watched his entire family be killed by Indians?
Well, my fate didn’t end with the coyotes. The next morning the aging namesake of the memorial park, Lawrence Kuehns, I believe, stopped to tell us we can’t camp in the park. He had donated the land to the Lions twenty years earlier and was quite disappointed they hadn’t followed through with their plans to develop this spot as a showcase of community pride. Kuehns took me on a tour of all the plants and trees he had added, including every now-tall pine. He was experimenting with some plants he’d brought back from Hawaii as well as with persimmon and pomegranate. I really encouraged him to work at the latter.
“I remember them as a kid,” I told him. When I visited Lone Mountain, Tenn., someone would always bring me round to a persimmon or pomegranate stand and harvesting them seemed so exotic. I could see Texas youths arriving at this park in the future and being amazed at these fruits that are so rarely found at produce stands anymore.
Buddy and Lawrence talked about war. Kuehns’ ship was just coming into Pearl Harbor when the Japanese arrived. Buddy had his finger on the buttons (read “launch control manager”) that triggered the Atlas E Minuteman II missiles. I wildcrafted flower seeds.
After repacking the tent, we discovered the battery was dead. The local sheriff’s deputy rescued us and was quite nice about it, although he did a check on our licenses.
“Ms. Hill, your Florida license is invalid.”
“What? That’s impossible. I haven’t had a ticket since 1980.” Then I thought of my off-the-wall insurance company. They had recently misplaced a check I’d sent them and canceled my insurance. I had called and gotten it straightened out and they assured me they wouldn’t send the cancellation notice to the state license bureau, which cancels the licenses of uninsured motorists. I explained this to the officer. He called Florida and, after a hot wait, said: “No problem.” I had been wondering if Texas jails are like Mexican jails.
We headed toward Fuehlsberg to get fuel and discovered FM 71 heading for the La Grange court house, the town being named for the hometown of some settlers from Tennessee. The monument there was dedicated to those “who picked the black bean.” I decided it sounded like something the Mexican army would do - those who picked the black bean were assassinated. I later discovered that 41 Texas citizens were shot to death in this fatal lottery.
My caffeine addiction kicked in, so we went to Frank’s Cafe across the street from the hall of justice. On the walls were a number of photos, including some lovely women who were probably employed at the brothel that inspired the staging of “The Biggest Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Frank’s served wonderful homecooked meals so we ate as well.
FM 71W continued toward Austin. Occasionally, we passed farms displaying their antique tractors. Buddy knew the models somewhat. I recalled thumbing through a magazine that had a photo of a “mystery tractor” and realized there was an element of the population that was inspired by such knowledge. Like the filling stations, tractors are not something to be tossed aside with progress, but, rather, set up like an Andy Warhol icon for the world to view.
We traveled along the outskirts of Austin for ages, passing the Edwards Aquifer forever. Buddy told me it runs underground and floods the entire country from Philadelphia to Denver. This very aquifer enabled nineteenth-century folks on the prairie to set up their windmills and farm.
“The water level keeps getting lower and lower,” Buddy continued, “and at a great expense, the government has set up several recharging stations. This must be one of them.” Apparently, the station catches the surface flood water and pumps it into the aquifer to keep the level high enough, so the wells across America’s farms won’t dry up and all of us starve. Hmm. Never knew anything about this whole operation which keeps cereal in my bowl every morning - even if at nearly four dollars a box these days.
We would see Austin to the right. It would disappear and reappear on the left. We stopped at the first sign of civilization, a Jack in the Box, and asked the attendant how to get to downtown Austin. She had no idea. What city are we in? Austin, she said. Amazing. An inebriated young man passed by us and offered to take us home for a drink, but we declined. He did recall that route 365 in front of us would take us to the capitol. We had delicious bagels for breakfast and walked into the dome – Petey my poodle in hand. Buddy had toured it before, so he didn’t join the tour group I discovered. The senate chamber was furnished in finer wood than the house chamber and had better phones. I learned that while, yes, Governor Hogg did name one of his daughters Ima, he did not name another one Ura as legend dictates. What father possessed such a sense of humor as to name a daughter Ima Hogg?
At one painting of the “Betsy Ross” of Texas, I asked about the origin of the Lone Star. Seems the seamstress only had enough silk for one star - and sewed up the flag’s future because of it. I prefer to think of the symbol as reflecting its time as an independent republic and the state’s shining spirit of independence and individuality.
Paintings of Sam Houston and Moses Austin were displayed at the front, including “The Raven” portrait that shows him wrapped in a Cherokee blanket, holding his hickory (I bet) cane and Texas hat. On the Senate Chamber walls were H. A. McArdle’s paintings of the battle of San Jacinto and dawn at the Alamo. An 1875 version of the Alamo painting went up in flames when the court house burned in 1881. The burnings of capitals is a lively legacy in Texas. Three times was about the average. Seems that vigilante injustice prompted some citizens to burn the court house when they wanted to destroy incriminating papers. Eventually, the townsfolk wised up and stopped building wooden structures. The stone buildings are still standing.
While parking near the capitol and the town’s first lawyer’s office, we ran into an old man in a hard hat with a walking stick. Buddy asked to examine his and gave me a full report on the virtues of this innocent-looking but whiplike fiberglass creation. The old man was also a descendant of the three hundred. He talked about his two aunts in their nineties, who still used a washboard, eighteen kerosene lamps and two wood stoves. Every spring, they made him carry everything out of the house so they could scrub it from top to bottom. As we were talking, I noticed another working man walk up to the nearby corner and begin using a walkie-talkie.
When we passed out of earshot, Buddy said they were both security persons, that we were in a sensitize area. He pointed out some discrepancies in how they were dressed. If I had known this, I wouldn’t have picked some branches of the wandering jews along the sidewalk. I’ve always known if I went to jail, it would be for plant “rescuing.” It occurred to me being in the CIA or in some sensitive defense position would make you automatically paranoid about everything going on around you. Just as we ignore our fragility, we remain totally ignorant of our surroundings. I saw these two men and accepted them as workers. Buddy saw them, looked further and interpreted the scene more fully. He was two or three steps ahead of everyone we met - had them all figured out by the time we encountered them. I don’t know whether I would want to give up my naiveté for this knowledge. I always said I trusted people until they give me a reason to distrust them. Of course, sometimes the reason can be unretractable.
The capitol was under heavy renovation and we had to make long detours to get anywhere, but we did pass the Texas archives. While Petey and Buddy lolled in the shade of an old oak tree, I went in to find my Texas kinfolk. I was in for a treat. Turns out that in 1849 Henderson King Yoakum, the grandson of George Sr. and son of George Jr., wrote the first History of Texas, dictated by his lifelong friend, Sam Houston. He had first moved to Murfreesboro, Tenn., not far from Nashville and became mayor and senator there. In between he passed the bar exam. In Texas, he wrote the charter for Austin College, was among the first trustees and received a perpetual scholarship for himself and his descendants.
While I was proud of his achievements, I was touched by his personal life. I read the impassioned letter he wrote to the Robert Cannon, Tennessee hotelier and father of the woman he loved. Because of the income disparities, the father refused the match. The young couple eloped and carved their destiny in Texas. The archives contain a letter Evaline wrote to her mother, praising the qualities of the man she married and saying her great love for him eclipsed even her sadness at the separation from her family. She noted how Henderson had taught her to read and write and this letter was a testimony to her new skills. The devoted husband wrote Cannon another letter, witnessing to how much Evaline’s linking her life to his continued to inspire him. The couple bore nine children during their marriage. I was also touched to see that Henderson had a hand in founding a woman’s college.
A new lengthy publication of by the Texas Historical Society offered a write-up on three other Yoakums. Turns out Franklin L. Yoakum, brother to Henderson, was a physician and Presbyterian minister. He also taught at Tehuacana College in Limestone County. Later, he was president of Larissa College in Cherokee County and, after the Civil War, founded the Texas Academy of Science. One of his sons, Ben Franklin Yoakum, was a railroad executive who oversaw the merger of the Frisco (St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company) and the Rock Island Line in 1905 and became known as the Yoakum Line. Two years later, he moved to a farm in Farmingdale, L.I., and became president and board chair of the Empire Board and Mortgage Company. He married Elizabeth Bennett of San Antonio, the daughter of a pioneer Southwest banking company and had two daughters. This Yoakum was active in the Democratic party but deserted it because he considered their farm relief programs inadequate. In his leisure he wrote articles for popular magazines and lectured on railroads.
Ben’s brother, Charles Henderson Yoakum (1849-1909), was an attorney, state legislator and U.S. congressman. During a spell of ill health, he practiced law in Los Angeles.
Along the trip I visited the grave of Henderson, a stone’s throw from Sam Houston’s burial spot in Huntsville. I also discovered the graves of Franklin, Eliza and daughter Lillian, age 15, in Myrtle Cemetery at Ennis. In metaphysically catching up with them after so many decades, I felt I had completed a family circle that had been broken by distance. A moving experience, indeed. I had looked at the rolling hills in Huntsville, Texas, where Henderson settled and knew that he, too, saw a touch of his native soil in Claiborne County, Tennessee. That must have been comforting for a young son who could not inherit the family farm and went off with two other brothers to follow the promise of adventure from Sam Houston, who inspired many Tennesseans to head West. The New Handbook of Texas carries a portrait of the handsome Henderson, whose broad forehead, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes I can easily recognize as a family trait.
The Walker County Court House in Huntsville was lavishly decorated with Texas and U.S. flags to celebrate Columbus Day. The brickwork in the Gibbs building and the post office were intricate and incredibly pleasing. Someone explained the layout of Texas counties - no more than 30 miles apart with the seat no more than five miles from center of the county. Most sat on a square surrounding by turn-of-the-century business structures. At the little bird sanctuary adjacent to the Gibbs home a block or two down from the court house I picked a seeds - vines, marigolds, a soft ferny flower. We also picked up some old-time black walnuts and pecans. I was sure the black walnuts originated from Claiborne County, where they grow in abundance.
Outside of town the previous night, we had passed a giant highway statue of Sam Houston, cane in hand. I tried to find the road again but ended up on 30S heading for Shiho. Something prompted me to take a picture of the antique store there, but let the prompting go. Later, at the four-corner barbecue restaurant, a Tejana couple told me that the store was the site of the first bank Bonnie and Clyde robbed on their way out of Huntsville. Of course, I went back and took a photo. Found out the pair had robbed this bank twice. We doglegged down FM 1375 to 149, which passes through the Sam Houston National Forest. Rescued a few wing feathers from a roadkill turkey vulture, took photos of the beautiful lake there and came out ten miles from the statue we had missed that morning. Texas roads are just like that.
We were going to head back to Orange the next morning, but ending up going west rather than east on 190. Couldn’t find 75 that was “straight ahead” for love or money. The first sign we came to said Dallas 162 miles. That’s when we became officially sure we were heading the wrong way. Stopped for a ranchero breakfast (beware, Texas biscuits are not soft and fluffy) and headed for Cowtown USA, Fort Worth, just below Dallas. We thoroughly enjoyed the Kimbell Art Museum, which featured an exhibit of Japanese pleasure prints. The docent was just starting a lecture when we arrived. Afterwards, we spent some time at the Japanese Garden downtown. The quiet ponds were filled with floating baskets of chrysanthemums. As we walked along the natural path, a caretaker came up with food for the pond fish, and the quiet waters teamed with multi-hued and huge goldfish. Buddy had brought a stick of incense with him and we found a quiet spot, lit it and meditated. I watched fall leaves land lightly on the water, create tiny ripples and float like weightless fairies. Yes, I was a henro, all right, and my journey took me deep into the heart of Texas.
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